The Screen

Angel didn't have very high hopes of the plan succeeding, although he still felt saddened by it. After all, he, Night and Day had gone through twelve years in the cathedral together. To call them friends would be an overstatement, but they knew each other and certainly weren't on bad terms. Or he'd thought so.

The Stone-Dwellers weren't particularly emotional creatures, there was too little time for anyone to be emotional before they had a set of ideals and standards forced onto them. Everyone was acting, be it real or not, everyone acted.

If they were upset, then they exaggerate that feeling, making it acting, or not act it out at all. To an even further degree, in order to show your emotions, you had to change your facial expression to the one that matched with what you were feeling. Basically, unless you didn't show any emotion at all, your feelings were all acted.

Your brain made the decision to change your facial muscles for you, but you were the one whose wishes your brain obeyed. You didn't realise that you would wish for your features to match your emotion, but you did. It had merely become so common that no-one caught such a thing.

And in that moment, Angel was crying. He hadn't know, but he had deeply wished for Night and Day to grant him access to them, their classes and resources for their foundation. It was a foolish, unlikely thing, and he knew that. However, Angel could not help but wish for it.

To have his wish shattered, especially since Angel had lived in the cathedral and not interacted with many humans, was a near-heartbreaking thing.

Angel had placed hope into his wish, and it had been completely diminished. He was thrown out by the spellweaver, without so much as a reason as to why. He should have been granted that right, at least.

And so Angel was found crying on the rooftop of a shining silver building that was a building away from the Temple of Ruin. He was sitting with his back to the temple, not wishing to see it anymore.

Angel looked up at the bright white screen, looking especially pitiful with tear stains down his face and his black eyes clouded by emotion that seemed to spread out from the blue rims in each eye. Some of the tears had already dried, leaving a thin layer of ice on his cheeks.

He wallowed in his sadness for some time more before he slowly felt all his sense being returned to him and his mind no longer muddled by emotions, and then Angel stood up and headed down the building.

Decisions can be very easily made at the slightest of whims, and Angel was no exception to this.

—————

The screen had been built by the first generation of the Stone-Dwellers, who had decided to cover the Sky, and were hailed as heroes for it, depending on where you were told that. They were also adventures, members of the Legend's party, or traitors.

Angel's family, like many other who belonged to Sky, thought of them as traitors. To cover the blessed creature that gave light and darkness was a sin only worthy of treason.

Angel himself, however, had a different perspective. He was confused at why anyone would cover the Sky, and curious at what caused them to think that they had to cover it, but he didn't think of them as traitors. After all, betrayal was all on perspective, and perspective on what side you chose to take.

Those that belonged to Sky took the perspective that the being they worshipped had been hidden from their views, and so, as people who had hidden the being, they were branded as traitors, later causing the isolation of the Skys to the rest of the Stone-Dwellers.

The ones who had blocked the Sky hadn't cared about that. In their eyes, they were doing whatever they were trying to do to achieve a goal, or perhaps that was the goal. They never were part of the Sky longers, and never would be, in their eyes.

It was their choice, their decision to do whatever had caused them to do such a thing. It all depended on perspective. And so they weren't traitors.

Angel could be called a traitor for not acting with the dignity of one that belonged to Sky. They were not the masters of their own lives: all lives belonged to the Sky, and live a pure life for the Sky.

He had behaved most undignified for one that belonged to Sky, going as far as begging and asking someone for help—and had that request denied.

It was an audacity.

However, it wasn't so in Angel's perspective. He had neither the ability nor the capacity to care about anyone else's wishes or feelings.

He cared only for himself, since there was nothing left to care about.

—————

'How much longer?' Drew's usually casual tone was sharp and commanding.

'Ten minutes at best,'Mont answered, closing her shimmering golden eyes. Then her figure blinked out of existence and a wooden doll dropped to the floor of the stone cave, five of its six eyes closed, leaving only the wide blue ruby left.

Drew stood up, jerking up Jeremy who lay with a side of his face rotten by infection.

'Come on,'he said urgently. 'You can handle it. We've gotten so far. Jeremy, get hold of yourself!'

Kasadros shook his head and headed for the exit of the cave. 'Leave him be.'

Drew wanted to argue, to shout and scream at how he would never leave his friend behind, and that they started it together and would end it together, but instead he took off his jacket and laid it covering the shivering Jeremy.

'I—' Then he bit back his words, seeing his friend's eyes, once bright and full of life, look at him with accusation in his gaze, almost as if telling Drew the words that he couldn't speak.

So in the end Drew turned his back and walked away, never daring to look back.

He continued walking as he heard shrieks come from the defenceless Jeremy, then the heavy dripping of blood.

Then silence came.